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May 2010

Welcome to Benidorm!

By Happiness & Joy, Love & Relationships4 Comments

It´s nearly been a week since I arrived to start a new chapter in my life with Boyfriend-W in Benidorm. It´s been a time of learning, a new language, a new job, a new life style (sleeping some of the day to stay up later in the evening and most importantly living with someone).

With the language I´ve started watching YouTube videos such as:

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As for my new job table waiting I´ve been shaddowing my colleagues watching and more importantly getting my hands dirty and pitching in. My first night I was quite fustrated with myself – feeling like I wasn´t picking things up quick enough. I´ve never done this sort of work before and learned that I´m actually quite hard on myself. I had to remind myself of the stages of competence:

The Four Stages

Unconscious Incompetence
The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.

Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.

Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.

Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes “second nature” and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
Natural language is an example of unconscious competence. Not every native speaker who can understand and be understood in a language is competent to teach it. Distinguishing between unconscious competence for performance-only, versus unconscious competence with the ability to teach, the term “kinesthetic competence” is sometimes used for the ability to perform but not to teach, while “theoretic competence” refers to the ability to do both.

Certain brain personality types favor certain skills (see the Benziger theory), and each individual possesses different natural strengths and preferences. Therefore, advancing from, say, stage 3 to 4 in one skill might be easier for one person than for another. Certain individuals will even resist progression to stage 2, because they refuse to acknowledge or accept the relevance and benefit of a particular skill or ability. Individuals develop competence only after they recognize the relevance of their own incompetence in the skill concerned.

Possible Fifth Stage
Many attempts have been made to add to this competence model. This addition would be a fifth stage, and there have been many different suggestions for what this fifth stage would be called. One suggestion is that it be called “Conscious competence of unconscious competence”. This would describe a person’s ability to recognize and develop unconscious competence in others.

Another suggestion by consultant David Baume:

As a fifth level, I like what I call ‘reflective competence’. As a teacher, I thought “If unconscious competence is the top level, then how on earth can I teach things I’m unconsciously competent at?” I didn’t want to regress to conscious competence – and I’m not sure if I could even I wanted to! So, reflective competence – a step beyond unconscious competence. Conscious of my own unconscious competence, yes, as you suggest. But additionally looking at my unconscious competence from the outside, digging to find and understand the theories and models and beliefs that clearly, based on looking at what I do, now inform what I do and how I do it. These won’t be the exact same theories and models and beliefs that I learned consciously and then became unconscious of. They’ll include new ones, the ones that comprise my particular expertise. And when I’ve surfaced them, I can talk about them and test them. Nonaka is good on this
—Nonaka, I. (1994). “A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation.” Organization Science 5: 14-37. (David Baume, May 2004)
(From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence, Last Accessed: 29 May 2010)

I´m currently conscious incompetent but getting better all the time.

As for my new life style, I´m loving it. Loving being with Boyfriend-W, going to bed with him and waking up with him. I´m adjusting my body clock to the evenings and most importantly looking forward to learning more.

Write soon,

Antony

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A new design and a new beginning

By Life, Love & Relationships2 Comments

A warm welcome my newly designed blog, Version 9 (see Geeky Post: Website Development for previous designs). I can’t take credit for the design, the good people at WordPress Theme Designer created the design and I’ve simply tweaked it with their support.

There were two reasons for the new design. The first was in response to feedback. People said that I write about a such diverse variety of topics that they struggle to catergorise my blog and choose articles that interest them. So hopefully this design will make it much easier to pick out posts that interest you? Comments welcome.

The second reason for the redesign was because I felt it was a good time for a new design as soon I embark on a new chapter in my life. So get a brew, get comfy and I will tell you what’s happened in the last month…

The story starts a few months ago Boyfriend-W came to visit, which I blogged about in a post entitled Meeting Family, Getting Closer & Making Plans. One evening on this visit he is sat up on the bed and I’m hoping on one foot putting on my jeans he looks at me.
“Antony.” he says, “Come and live with me in Benidorm.”
After my inital shock and asking for sometime to think and thinking about it I decided I would. Afterall he makes me happy and our relationship seems to go from strengh to strengh.

So the last month has been a busy one. I asked work to give me six months unpaid leave which they kindly agreed and I am eternally greatful for. I’ve spent countless evenings sorting & packing. I’ve taken and sent things over to Bendorm. I’ve thrown lots of rubbish out, given lots of things away and packed things for storage at mums or one of my close friends.

My apartment (see The Move) I have put up for rent through an agency. I’ve been telephoning and emailing various companies to end contracts and notifing relevant institutions of my change of address.

Finally add on top of that seemingly endless social engagements as I try to meet up with as many family and friends as I can before I leave (all of which I am going to miss dearly) and you can understand why I haven’t blogged in a month.

So as I start on my next adventure with Boyfriend-W in Benidorm in the next few weeks, look forward to normal blogging service resuming.

Write soon,

Antony

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